In my rushed last entry, I forgot to mention a few things. Monday would have been my mother's 64th birthday. In her last 5 or 6 years, my sisters and I usually gave her her birthday gifts at Christmas because we didn't often get to see her just a few weeks later for her birthday. We'd make sure to wrap them differently from Christmas gifts so she could tell they were birthday gifts and not Christmas gifts. We always called her on her birthday, though. I thought about her that day. It's hard to believe that it's been nearly 8 years since she died. Some days it seems so recent and other days it seems like forever since I saw her last. With Amy's baby on the way, we've had many sad moments thinking about her and wishing she were here to share the experience.

Last Friday morning, I woke up and started my day as usual but noticed that when I walked on hard surfaces, my right heel felt like I was walking on broken glass. Not a comfortable feeling, I might add. It wasn't red and there was no visible would but it still hurt. It was a little warm, though. I remembered that I'd felt that sensation before and wondered if maybe I had cellulitis again. Sure enough, as the morning progressed, my foot started getting redder and redder and hotter and hotter. I called my doc who couldn't see me until 4pm. I had planned to do some shopping that day but had to put that on hold, except for a brief foray to the scrapbook store to grab a few sheets of paper. My foot really hurt and it was moving into my arch and the outside edge of my foot, too.

By 4pm, almost my whole foot was screaming red and hotter than a sunburn and it was a little swollen, too. Sure enough, I had a raging case of cellulitis. There was no noticeable port of entry for the infection, though. Anyway, the doc prescribed some ceph@losporin and said to put cool compresses on my foot. Within about 2 or 3 hours of taking the first dose, the redness on my foot had dissipated dramatically and by the next morning, it was back to normal. Of course, I still have 10 days of antibiotics to take. Blech! But it made me ever so grateful for modern pharmacopia. I know that there is a tendency to over-medicate in this society but when something like this comes up, I'm so so so glad that there are drugs that can knock it out quickly and safely. I can't imagine what would have happened in my grandmother's day if she'd have ended up with cellulitis. At the rate this was spreading, it would have engulfed my whole leg in a day or two. I remember my great uncle having cellulitis all over his body because he didn't get to the doctor when it first started and he was in tremendous pain. I'm ever so grateful that I only had to endure one day of relatively minor pain. And I'm ever so grateful it was not a strain of resistant strep or staph that infected my foot.

Joey pulled out another tooth yesterday. She's going to be a toothless wonder at the rate she's going. When she goes back to the orthodontist today, her mouth will look a lot different than it did just a few days ago when they made her first set of impressions! Her personal tooth fairy is going to go broke at this rate. And she's got six more teeth that are at various stages of wiggliness, though none seem like they'll be imminently ready for the tooth fairy. I will be very sad when the tooth fairy stops visiting our house.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 and couldn't fall right back to sleep. Then when Ed got up just after 6am, I was lulled back to sleep by the sound of his shower. Then he kissed me when he left at 6:30 and I woke briefly but fell back to sleep. At 7am, I bounded out of bed and got Joey up in a rush--she leaves to catch the bus at 7:23 (very precise timing around here). I usually get her up at 6:45 but in my morning sleep/wake/sleep/wake delerium, I must have hit my snooze button without even realizing it. Twice. So it was a frenzied morning, but she got out the door well fed (two fried eggs--it's almost the only breakfast thing she can eat right now with her spacers and two missing teeth) and with a nice soft turkey and avocado sandwich and jello for lunch. I can't believe I was able to cook her eggs and make her lunch and get her shoes on her (sometimes an arduous process) in just 20 minutes. Whew!

And then I wasn't tired enough to go back to bed, as is my usual modus operandi. My eyes are quite dry and irritated, though. But the rest of me isn't all that tired. What a treat. Usually I'm just counting down the minutes until she's out the door and I can jump back in my delicious bed for a few more zzzzz.

Now I'm tired. All this talk of sleep has made me feel drowsy. Either that or I need some soothing eye drops. I've been wearing makeup every day and my eyes are none too happy about it.

I think I'll go hit the scrapbook table now. I'm in a serious scrapbook mood, as I think I mentioned in an earlier entry. I've been doing several pages a day--two here, two there. I just sit down at the table and pound out a few pages when I have some time. I think I'll do them between loads of laundry today. (Don't ask me how much I spent at my scrapbook store excursion with Stacey and Bayley the other day. I won't tell.) Don't I have the exciting life?

--L